Trump claims ‘caravans’ of migrants in Mexico mean US ‘is being stolen’

Volley of presidential tweets concerns large group, mostly Honduran, travelling through Mexico to reach US border

Donald Trump returned to the offensive on immigration on Monday, repeating a claim that “caravans” of migrants from Central America are threatening to enter the US via Mexico and demanding: “Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!”

“Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large ‘Caravans’ of people enter their country,” the president tweeted. “They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border laws.

“Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People. Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don’t allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!”

Trump’s use of the term “caravans” – also made in a sequence of tweets on Easter Sunday – was a reference to a large group of people who are heading through Mexico, hoping to reach the US border. A reporter from BuzzFeed has been with them.

“For five days now,” Adolfo Flores reported on Friday, “hundreds of Central Americans – children, women and men, most of them from Honduras – have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.”

The “caravan” has been reported on by Fox News, Trump’s preferred cable network.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said it would issue a statement on the caravan later on Monday.

The country’s interior minister, Alfonso Navarete Prida, told reporters on Monday: “It is absolutely incorrect to say that there is no effort in Mexico to regulate, support and mange migratory processes.”

The “nuclear option” Trump refers to would be a reform of Senate rules to allow major legislation to pass with 51 votes rather than the current 60. The Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has shown no sign of acceding to Trump’s repeated demand.

Timeline

​Donald Trump and Dreamers: a timeline of mixed messages​

16 August 2015

Upon announcing his presidential bid Donald Trump makes hardline immigration reform central to his campaign and pledges to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca).

“I will immediately terminate President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration,” he says.

7 December 2016

Weeks after winning the White House, ​​President-elect Trump appears to soften his stance on Dreamers. Despite offering no specific policy he promises to “work something out”.

Trump acknowledges the fraught road to a solution, describing Daca as a “very difficult thing for me as I love these kids”.

“I have to deal with a lot of politicians,” Trump says. “And I have to convince them that what I’m saying is right.”

5 February 2017

Trump abruptly announces ​​he will end Daca, phasing out applications for renewal by March 2018. ​​The president insists the decision provides a “window of opportunity for Congress to finally act”.

14 September 2017

Following talks with Democrats, Trump hints a deal may be close, but suggests it wouldn’t include a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.

“We’re not looking at citizenship. We’re not looking at amnesty,” Trump tells reporters.

9 January 2018

Trump promises to “take the heat” for a bipartisan Daca bill being brokered by senators. But within days he revokes his support, calling the bipartisan plan “a big step backwards”.​ The US government shuts down after negotiations over the budget and a Dreamers solution collapse. On the same day a district judge rules the administration must keep the program open to new applications, a ruling that is later supported by other federal court decisions.

24 January 2018

With the government reopened with a temporary bill, Trump tells reporters he is now open to a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers “over a period of 10-12 years” if the individual “does a great job, they work hard​”.

1 April 2018

Trump appears to end the possibility of a bipartisan deal over Daca with a series of furious tweets on Easter Sunday. He blames Democrats and declares: “NO MORE DACA DEAL!”

Oliver Laughland

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Organizers said some 1,300 people were participating in the caravan, which is currently traversing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the southern state of Oaxaca.

Mexican immigration officials routinely detain and deport hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, who in recent years have streamed north to escape horrific violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico deported 16,278 individuals in the first two months of 2018 – 97% of them were Central Americans.

The migrants’ paths through Mexico are perilous. Criminal gangs, often acting in cahoots with crooked public officials, prey upon migrants, often extorting them or kidnapping them for ransom.

Shelters run the length of the country, offering migrants a place to eat, rest and wash and tend to their wounds as they head north. The operators of these shelters expressed wariness with the caravan currently winding its way through southern Mexico, saying such attempts at moving migrants through Mexico often turn into targets for criminal groups.

Jorge Andrade, a spokesperson for the shelters, says “polleros” – human smugglers – and other organized crime members have infiltrated previous caravans. People pretending to be migrants, meanwhile, joined in and started extorting actual migrants.

“It’s a real logistical challenge, in addition to security questions,” Andrade said. During a 2014 caravan that Andrade accompanied, “we realized that we had been infiltrated by people from organized crime, who we could identify.”

Many of the participants in caravans inevitably are offered humanitarian visas, which allow them to temporarily remain in Mexico, or they file asylum applications.

Alex Mensing, project coordinator for Pueblos Sin Fronteras, which is accompanying the caravan, says the shelters in Mexico“do important work and caravan members have benefited from their services.” He added that migrants participating in the caravan would receive legal advice upon reaching the city of Puebla and some would likely seek asylum in Mexico.

“The people in the caravan are much, much less vulnerable to human rights abuses,” Mensing said.

On Monday, Trump widened his attack, tweeting: “DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon … No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!”

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Daca, was an Obama-era programme which shielded undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, known as Dreamers, from the threat of deportation.

“The [Trump] attack on Daca was designed to pit Central Americans against Mexicans and to put immigrants in the United States against immigrants who are trying to exercise their right to seek asylum in the the United States,” Mensing said.

Trump announced the cancellation of Daca last year. No replacement has been instituted but court orders have maintained protections for recipients.

Trump claimed on Sunday that “a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of Daca, and we’re going to have to really see”.

In fact, to be eligible for Daca, applicants must have lived in the US continually since 15 June 2007 and come to the country before their 16th birthday. Applicants must also either be in school, or have graduated high school, or have been honourably discharged from the US military or coast guard.

Trump’s decision to quash any remaining hopes of a Daca deal drew criticism on Sunday. John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio who is seen as a possible primary challenger to Trump in 2020, tweeted: “A true leader preserves & offers hope, doesn’t take hope from innocent children who call America home. Remember, today is Easter Sunday.”

Later on Monday, Trump returned to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a favourite target which in his Sunday tweets he had threatened to “stop”. “Mexico is making a fortune on NAFTA,” he wrote, adding: “With all of the money they make from the US, hopefully they will stop people from coming through their country and into ours, at least until Congress changes our immigration laws!”

Polls in Mexico show people south of the border support Nafta, but don’t see themselves as big winners from the trade deal, which also includes Canada.

Regarding possible motives for Trump’s latest outburst, which also took in Amazon, NBC and CNN, news outlets reported White House sources as saying Trump has been told his base thinks he has softened on immigration.

The president has also been beset by damaging stories, from developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and alleged collusion between Trump aides and Moscow, to adult film actor Stormy Daniels’ claim that she had an affair with the billionaire in 2006.

Controversies over ethics and spending are affecting members of the Trump administration, including housing and urban development secretary Ben Carson and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt.

On Sunday the former Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin told network television he was fired last week, rather than resigning as the White House claimed. Shulkin, who opposed the privatisation of VA operations, blamed political appointees for his downfall.